Found it on Facebook: The Left enlists yet another sweet-faced child in the war against religion *UPDATED*
[UPDATE: If you came here from Ricochet, welcome. Having read Judith Levy’s post, I think she misunderstood the point I was making here. I obviously wrote with insufficient clarity. I’ve expanded upon — and, I hope, clarified — my point in this post.]
It’s been many years since I read Jane Eyre, but I doubt that I’ll ever forget the ugliness of Mr. Brocklehurst’s Christianity, one composed of hellfire in the afterlife, and suffering and humiliation in the present time. With Mr. Brocklehurst firmly in mind, I defy you to walk into any church in America and find his peculiarly corrosive view of religion. As best as I can tell, most Christians today view God as a loving God, and see themselves as his blessed creation. If they can embrace God and his teachings, they will live a good life that sees them sitting at His feet in the Afterlife. Modern Christianity, as actually practiced by modern Christians, strikes me as a very beneficent religion, with the emphasis on Grace, not Damnation.
One would never know this, though, if one lived solely in the Left’s anti-religious fever swamps. When they’re not busy mis-citing scripture to pass Obamacare, they view religion as negatively as did Mr. Brocklehurst. In other words, the Left’s is a profoundly regressive view of religion. This isn’t surprising, since they’re regressive in most of their beliefs, ranging from abortion, which they view through a 1950s lens, all the way to race, which they also see as stuck in a perpetual 1950s Jim Crow reality.
This grim, regressive world view explains why, when I opened my “real me” Facebook today, I found this much-celebrated image touted amongst my Progressive friends:
I have an alternative poster for that sweet little girl, one I easily created even though I’m a Jew who believes in the possibility of a divinity, rather than in a divinity’s absolute reality:
I’m sure all of you can come up with more examples for column one or column two. If you think of anything, please be sure to share it with all of us.